A Brief History of the Bible

Can we trust the Bible? What translations are accurate? How did it come to be? And all those other questions we ask about it...

This is part of my Brief History series — where I step back and explore how many of the beliefs, practices, and assumptions we grew up with (especially in American evangelicalism) actually developed over time. And yes, the “brief’ history posts are my longest ones. Irony abounds.

In the Beginning…

Before there was a Bible, there were stories.

Not books. Not scrolls. Not chapters and verses. Just stories.

For most of human history, sacred stories weren’t written down. They were told and retold — sung around campfires, passed down in families, recited in communal gatherings. And like all good stories, they probably shifted a little over time. Not because people were careless, but because that’s how oral cultures work. The core truths stay. The details flex.

When we talk about the Bible today — especially the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament) — we’re looking at the end product of centuries of this process.

When did writing actually begin?

Scholars have different opinions here, but we can get a pretty good general picture.

Some of the earliest written fragments of what would become the Hebrew Bible likely come from the period of the monarchy — somewhere between 1000 and 700 BCE. But most of the actual work of writing, editing, and compiling probably didn’t happen until much later.

The turning point, for many scholars, is the Babylonian exile (around 586 BCE). When the temple was destroyed and the people were taken into exile, there was a sudden urgency to preserve their identity. The exile shattered many of the old assumptions about God, kings, land, and covenant. So they wrote.

Much of the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) was likely shaped or finalized during and after this period. Stories that had existed for generations were collected, organized, and edited into something resembling what we recognize today.

In other words: The Bible wasn’t written by one person, at one time, sitting at a desk. It was layered. Compiled. Woven together across centuries.

What counted as “Scripture” for early Jews?

That question didn’t have a simple answer either.

Early on, there was no single list of what books were considered Scripture. The Torah became central first — the foundational law and story of Israel. Later came the writings of the prophets, the Psalms, and other wisdom books.

What we now call the “Tanakh” (an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im [Prophets], and Ketuvim [Writings]) wasn’t fully fixed as a closed canon until long after most of the events it describes.

For centuries, the boundaries were a little fuzzy.

And perhaps most importantly: these ancient people didn’t think about Scripture the way many modern Christians do.

They weren’t obsessed with whether every word was literally true in a modern sense. They weren’t arguing about inerrancy. They were concerned with preserving the story of who they were, where they came from, and how God had acted among them.

How Genesis (and the Torah) Was Actually Written

When people first start looking under the hood of the Bible, Genesis is one of the easiest places to see what’s actually going on.

Because if you just sit down and read it carefully — without any fancy scholarship — you start noticing some strange things:

Two different creation stories (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2).
God has different names in different passages (sometimes “Elohim,” sometimes “YHWH”).
The same story gets told more than once, slightly differently.
Some stories feel priestly and rule-focused, while others feel earthy and personal.

That’s not a mistake.

That’s because what we now call Genesis — and really, the whole Torah — is a blending of several ancient traditions that were originally separate.

Scholars call this the Documentary Hypothesis. It basically says that the first five books of the Bible weren’t written by Moses sitting down with a scroll, but were woven together from multiple sources. Here are the big ones:

J Source (Yahwist)
Likely written in the southern kingdom of Judah.
Uses the name YHWH (rendered as “the LORD” in most English Bibles).
Earthy, narrative style; God is more personal and anthropomorphic.
Examples: second creation story (Genesis 2), many of the patriarchal stories.

E Source (Elohist)
Likely written in the northern kingdom of Israel.
Uses Elohim for God.
Emphasizes dreams, angels, and indirect contact with God.
Blends in many stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

P Source (Priestly)
Written or compiled during/after the exile.
Very concerned with laws, genealogies, rituals, and temple worship.
Highly structured — for example, the seven-day creation in Genesis 1.
Strong emphasis on God's transcendence and holiness.

D Source (Deuteronomist)
Primarily behind Deuteronomy and much of the historical books.
Focuses on covenant, law, obedience, and consequences.
Likely composed during Josiah’s reforms (late 7th century BCE).

These sources were edited and combined over time, producing the Torah we have today.

This isn’t some fringe theory. It’s been the mainstream scholarly consensus for over a century (with debates about details, of course). And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The Bible doesn’t try to hide this. In fact, its editors seemed more interested in preserving multiple voices than forcing them into a perfect system.

It’s not one author. It’s a chorus.

Scripture Before and During Jesus’ Time

By the time we get to the first century, the Hebrew Scriptures had already gone through centuries of writing, editing, and compiling.

But here’s the key: there still wasn’t a single, universally agreed-upon Bible.

The Torah — the first five books — was clearly central. No serious Jewish group in Jesus’ day rejected it. But beyond that, things got murkier.

Different Jewish groups (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, early Jesus-followers, etc.) recognized different books as authoritative. Some elevated certain prophets. Some focused more on wisdom writings. Some accepted additional books that never made it into the later Hebrew Bible.

The Septuagint: The Bible of Many Jews

One of the most important developments during this period was the Septuagint — a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, produced a few centuries before Jesus.

For many Jews living outside of Palestine (in places like Alexandria, where Greek was the common language), the Septuagint became their Bible. It included not only translations of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, but also several additional books — what Protestants later called the Apocrypha.

Books like Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, and 1 and 2 Maccabees were widely read and respected. Many Jews, including early Christians, considered them part of their sacred tradition.

When you read quotations of Scripture in the New Testament, many of them match the Septuagint wording more closely than the Hebrew text. This tells us that Jesus and the apostles (or at least their audiences) were often familiar with the Septuagint version.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Window Into the Chaos

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 20th century gave us an unprecedented look at what the Bible looked like before it was finalized.

And one of the biggest takeaways is simple: it wasn’t clean.

Multiple versions of the same books existed side-by-side. Some texts we now consider “non-canonical” were copied and cherished. The scrolls reveal an active, ongoing conversation about which texts carried authority — and they remind us that the boundaries of the Bible were still very much in process.

The Jewish Tradition of Midrash

One of the biggest differences between how ancient Jews and modern Christians read Scripture is this: they didn’t expect the text to stand alone.

Jewish interpreters engaged in what’s called midrash — an ongoing, creative dialogue with the text. They added commentary, retold stories, filled in gaps, reimagined motives, and pulled out hidden meanings.

Midrash wasn’t seen as changing or disrespecting the text. It was seen as honoring it — treating Scripture as a living conversation with God, where meaning unfolds over time and through community.

This tradition shaped how Jews read the Hebrew Bible in Jesus’ day.

It also shaped how early Christians read it.

Many of the ways New Testament writers use the Old Testament — quoting prophecies, applying old texts to Jesus, or finding symbolic fulfillment in unexpected places — are examples of midrashic interpretation. They weren’t usually trying to give a "plain reading" in a modern sense. They were engaging the sacred story with creativity and reverence.

In my opinion, much of what we see in some of the more mythic or miraculous stories about Jesus may reflect a kind of midrash-like impulse. Early Christians, steeped in Jewish tradition, were making sense of Jesus' life through the lens of their Scriptures. Stories like the birth narratives, the young Jesus in the temple, or some of John’s high theology weren’t necessarily intended as newspaper-style reporting. They were sacred storytelling — drawing from symbols, patterns, and echoes of earlier texts to show who Jesus was and what his life meant.

The Christian Canon Emerges

By the time Jesus dies — probably somewhere around 30 CE — there still is no such thing as "The Bible" as Christians think of it today.

The only Scriptures early Christians had were what we now call the Hebrew Bible (and even that wasn’t fully settled, as we’ve seen).

What changes after Jesus’ death is this: the followers of Jesus start writing.

The New Testament Didn’t Drop Out of the Sky

The first Christian writings weren’t Gospels. They were letters.

Most scholars agree that the earliest surviving Christian writings are Paul’s letters, written between roughly 50 and 65 CE. Paul is writing to specific communities — often addressing specific conflicts, theology, or behavior — and he doesn’t seem to imagine that his letters will one day be considered sacred Scripture.

After Paul’s letters come the Gospels. Mark is likely first, written around 65–70 CE. Then Matthew and Luke, probably between 80–90 CE. John may be written near the end of the first century or into the early second.

Alongside these, other letters (like James, Peter, and John) are written, as well as Revelation — a highly symbolic apocalyptic text likely written in the late first century.

But during this whole period, no one has a complete New Testament sitting on their shelf. These documents are circulating individually, copied by hand, and read aloud in small communities.

These Weren’t Written As Scripture

The writers of these books — Paul, the Gospel authors, and others — didn’t think they were writing Scripture in the way we mean it today.

Paul wrote letters to address specific issues in specific churches. The recipients saw them as deeply important — full of teaching, correction, encouragement, and insight. They copied them. They shared them with other communities. But no one in the first few decades was saying: “This is Holy Scripture. This belongs alongside the Torah.”

The same is true for the Gospels. The authors were preserving the story of Jesus for their communities, drawing from oral traditions, other sources, and their own theological reflections. They saw these writings as valuable, authoritative, and inspired — but the category of “New Testament Scripture” simply didn’t exist yet.

It’s only over time, as these writings continued to circulate and be used in worship, that certain books gradually took on the status of sacred Scripture.

The Canon Fights Begin

As Christianity spreads in the second and third centuries, questions start to emerge: Which writings are authoritative? Which teachings reflect the true faith?

Some groups, like Marcion (around 140 CE), proposed very narrow canons — rejecting the entire Old Testament and including only a small set of Christian writings. Others embraced a wider variety of texts, including gospels and letters that never made it into today’s Bible.

During this time, dozens of gospels, apocalypses, letters, and writings were circulating — some orthodox, some considered heretical by emerging church leaders.

Slowly, Consensus Builds

By the late second century, most Christian leaders agree on at least some books: the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), Paul’s letters (though debates remain over which ones Paul actually wrote), and Acts.

But even as late as the third and early fourth centuries, some books are still disputed — especially Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.

When Was the New Testament Officially Decided?

The first full list matching today’s 27-book New Testament comes from Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, in his Easter letter of 367 CE.

Shortly after, councils at Hippo (393 CE) and Carthage (397 CE) affirmed the same list.

The New Testament wasn’t “closed” for nearly 300 years after Jesus’ death.

And it didn’t happen by divine memo. It happened through debates, arguments, power struggles, theological battles, and — eventually — a practical consensus.

Translations and Transmissions

Once the texts of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the emerging New Testament started to take shape, the next problem was simple: how do you actually get these writings to people?

No printing press. No mass production. No instant downloads.

Everything was copied by hand.

Copying by Hand — And What That Means

For the first 1,400 years or so, every Bible in existence was handwritten by scribes.

Inevitably, this means there are variations between manuscripts. A scribe might accidentally skip a word, misread a faded letter, or even correct what they thought was a mistake in the original. Sometimes small changes crept in to clarify theology or harmonize conflicting passages.

Most of these variations are minor. Spelling. Word order. Small additions or omissions. The copying of the texts was surprisingly stable, even if the way people interpreted and understood those texts continued to shift and evolve over time.

The Septuagint — The First Major Translation

As we covered earlier, the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX) was produced in the few centuries before Jesus — translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This allowed Jewish communities living in the Greek-speaking world to access their sacred texts.

The Septuagint also included additional books that didn’t appear in the later Hebrew canon — books that would later become part of the debate between Catholics and Protestants.

Early Christians heavily used the Septuagint. Many Old Testament quotations in the New Testament match the Septuagint wording more closely than the Hebrew versions.

The Latin Vulgate — The Bible of the Western Church

In the 4th century, as Christianity became legal (and eventually official) in the Roman Empire, another key translation emerged.

Jerome was commissioned to produce a Latin translation of the Bible — what became known as the Vulgate.

Jerome worked from both Hebrew and Greek sources to create a version accessible to the growing Latin-speaking Church. The Vulgate would remain the standard Bible of Western Christianity for over 1,000 years.

For most medieval Christians, the Vulgate was the Bible — and few believers had direct access to any Bible at all. Literacy was limited, and copies were expensive and rare.

No Original Autographs

We don’t possess any original manuscripts of any biblical book.

Every text we have is a copy — often a copy of a copy of a copy.

So, do we know for sure that we have the Bible exactly as it was first written? No — we don’t. Because we have no originals, we can never say with absolute certainty that every word matches the first draft.

But do we have the most likely text? Yes — remarkably so. Through thousands of manuscript fragments — some very early — modern scholars have pieced together what is almost certainly very close to the original wording.

If you don’t need the Bible to function as a magic, perfect, divinely dictated life manual, you can actually step back and marvel at what the academic community has accomplished: the careful, disciplined reconstruction of some of the most ancient and influential documents in human history.

Reformation and Printing

For most of Christian history, very few people owned a Bible.

It wasn’t just that they couldn’t afford one — most couldn’t read even if they had one. The Bible was primarily something you heard read aloud at church. And for over a thousand years in Western Europe, that Bible was the Latin Vulgate.

All of that started to change in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Printing Press Changes Everything

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450, it triggered one of the most important cultural shifts in human history. For the first time, books could be mass produced.

One of the very first major books printed was — of course — the Bible.

Suddenly, the Bible became something ordinary people could potentially own, study, and debate. And once that door opened, there was no going back.

The Protestant Reformation: The Battle Over the Bible

Roughly 70 years after Gutenberg, Martin Luther launched what became the Protestant Reformation. While many factors led to the Reformation, access to the Bible was central.

Luther argued that ordinary people should read the Scriptures in their own language, not rely solely on the Latin Vulgate and the authority of the Church. He famously translated the Bible into German, making it accessible to ordinary Christians for the first time.

But translation wasn’t just about language — it was also about theology.

The Protestant and Catholic Bible Divide

As Protestants broke away from Rome, a major question emerged: which books belong in the Bible?

The key disagreement centered on the books we now call the Apocrypha (or the Deuterocanonical books in Catholic tradition). These included writings like Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, and others.

These books were part of the Septuagint and had been used by many early Christians. But they were not included in the Hebrew Bible.

Luther argued that since they weren’t in the Hebrew canon, they shouldn’t be considered fully authoritative. The Catholic Church, in response, formally included them at the Council of Trent in 1546.

This is why Catholic Bibles today include these additional books, while Protestant Bibles do not.

It’s not that Catholics added books later — that’s a common myth. The Protestant Reformers chose to limit the Old Testament to the Hebrew texts. Catholics retained the wider canon that had been part of Christian tradition for over a thousand years.

To simplify: one of the biggest reasons Catholics and Protestants ended up with slightly different Bibles wasn’t purely theological — it was political. Once the Reformation broke open the authority of the Church, both sides needed to defend their version of the true Bible. Protestants narrowed the Old Testament canon to the Hebrew texts. Catholics reaffirmed the broader set of texts that had been in use for centuries. Much of it came down to who got to draw the lines of orthodoxy in a divided church.

The King James Bible: Fact vs Fiction

For many people — especially in certain parts of the Christian world — the King James Version (KJV) holds a kind of sacred status. Some even believe it’s the one true Bible, or that it’s somehow uniquely inspired.

But like everything else we’ve seen so far, the real story is more human, more political, and honestly, more interesting.

Why Was the King James Bible Commissioned?

In 1604, King James I of England authorized a new English translation of the Bible. The goal wasn’t some grand spiritual calling — it was mostly about unifying his fractured kingdom.

At the time, England was divided between different religious groups: Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and others. Many Puritans didn’t trust the existing official English Bible (the Bishops' Bible). Others preferred earlier translations like William Tyndale’s or the Geneva Bible.

James wanted a single, authorized version that could unify English-speaking Christianity under his rule — and, not coincidentally, under his authority as head of the Church of England.

How the Translation Was Done

James didn’t sit down and translate the Bible himself. He didn’t write it. He didn’t secretly edit it to inject his own theology.

Instead, he appointed a committee of about 50 scholars — divided into six teams working in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster. They were instructed to base their work on the best available original-language manuscripts, as well as prior English translations.

The KJV translators leaned heavily on previous English work — especially Tyndale’s pioneering translation, much of which survives word-for-word in the KJV.

The translators were instructed to avoid language that would challenge the authority structures of the Church of England. For example:

The word “church” was retained instead of alternatives like “assembly” or “congregation,” which could have implied less institutional control.
Certain phrasing choices reflected theological compromises designed to keep different factions relatively satisfied.

Was There Political Pressure? Yes — But Not a Conspiracy

Like all translations, the King James Bible was shaped by its historical and political context.

But the idea that King James personally rewrote the Bible to fit some secret agenda is simply false.

There was no hidden rewrite.
There was no massive doctrinal overhaul.
What there was — like every translation — was a set of human choices influenced by culture, politics, and theology.

The Strange Legacy of the KJV

For many of us — and especially for our parents' and grandparents' generations — the King James Bible wasn’t a Bible. It was THE Bible.

It was sacred.
It sounded holy.
It felt like the way God and Jesus must have actually talked.

Newer translations sounded less holy. Less Bible-y. The old English phrasing — with its "thees" and "thous" — carried an authority that many Christians simply absorbed without ever questioning why. This was especially true in churches and communities where people were deeply faithful but often not highly educated in ancient languages. And that created a strange irony that still shapes much of evangelicalism today:

A literate but largely untrained church trying to decipher 17th-century English as if it were the very words of God.

The irony gets deeper when you realize that even in the 1600s, the language of the King James Version was already somewhat old-fashioned. The translators intentionally leaned into a more elevated, formal style — partly to make it sound majestic.

And to be clear: the KJV isn’t the worst translation, technically speaking. It has problems, but it also reflects a serious scholarly effort for its time. The real problem isn’t its accuracy. The problem is this:

99% of modern people simply don’t read or speak old English anymore.

And that means the KJV often created an unnecessary barrier between ordinary Christians and the text itself — as if reading the Bible required not only faith, but a working knowledge of Shakespearean English.

And of course, there were already plenty of other barriers to understanding the Bible without adding that one.

Translations Today: What People Get Right and Wrong

This brings us to the present — where many of the debates about the Bible aren’t about which books belong, but about which translation is “the best.”

So let’s name a few realities as clearly as we can.

We Still Don’t Have the Originals

This hasn’t changed. We have no original manuscripts of any book of the Bible.

Every single verse you’ve ever read is based on copies of copies. Sometimes many generations removed. But thanks to thousands of surviving fragments, some very ancient, modern scholars have been able to reconstruct the likely original wording of most of the text with a high degree of confidence.

Is it perfect? No.

Do we probably have the text as close as we’re ever going to get? Yes — and it’s honestly a remarkable achievement.

This is where modern biblical scholarship deserves some respect. Modern scholarship isn’t perfect, but the level of care and rigor that’s gone into reconstructing these texts is genuinely impressive — especially when you consider how far back we’re reaching into history.

The "Telephone Game" Myth (Sort Of)

People often say: Isn’t the Bible just a long game of telephone? Don’t things change every time it’s copied or translated?

In the very earliest period — yes, there was more variance. Scribes made mistakes. Margins got misread. Lines got accidentally skipped or repeated. Some changes were accidental; a few may have been intentional. But modern textual criticism exists precisely to sort through these variations and identify the most reliable readings.

In fact, for modern scholars, it feels less like a game of telephone and more like forensic reconstruction.

The truth is: most major Bible translations today — whatever their theological slant — are working from essentially the same earliest manuscripts. They’re drawing on the same core Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts, many of which weren’t even available to translators in previous centuries.

Every Translation Is an Interpretation

No translation is neutral.

The Bible wasn’t written in English. Ancient Hebrew and Greek don’t always translate neatly into modern languages. Word choices have to be made. And every translator brings assumptions to the table.

Some translations aim for word-for-word accuracy (more literal), while others aim for thought-for-thought readability (more dynamic). Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses.

But there’s also theological influence. For example:

The ESV has been criticized for gender-exclusive language, reflecting complementarian theological commitments.
Some translations lean Calvinist. Others lean more free-church evangelical.
Some prioritize readability. Others preserve older church traditions.

This doesn’t mean every translator has a guiding secret agenda. But it does mean that no translation is purely objective.

Which Translation Is Best?

Honestly, there’s no single answer. It depends what you’re trying to do.

For casual reading: something clear and accessible (NIV, NLT, CSB).
For study: a balance of readability and accuracy (NRSV, NET, updated NASB).
For historical-literary beauty: the King James still has its place.
For serious scholarship: learning at least some Greek and Hebrew helps.

The point is: you don’t have to fear modern translations. They aren’t butchering the Bible. They’re the product of generations of serious academic work, each with a hint of subtle positioning in places.

So… Can We Trust the Bible?

This is usually the question that sits underneath everything we’ve talked about.

Can we trust the Bible?

My short answer is: trust it how?

If you’re asking whether I trust that the Bible we have today is very close to what was originally written — then yes. Mostly, I do. Not perfectly. But overall, yes.

We don’t have the originals. But modern scholarship has done an extraordinary job of reconstructing ancient documents from thousands of fragments. If we’re simply asking whether the words we read are pretty close to what the first audiences read, the answer is: more than many people realize.

But of course, that’s not the real question most people are asking.

The bigger question isn’t whether we have the words.

The bigger question is: who wrote those words? To whom? When? Why? For what purpose? With what agenda?

It’s one thing to say that the Gospel of John originally included the story of Lazarus. Or that the Gospels originally told the story of Magi visiting baby Jesus. Or that 2 Kings originally included the story of a floating axe head. Or Numbers included a talking donkey. Or Joshua described the walls of Jericho falling after trumpets blared.

Do I think we have those stories today more or less as they were first written? In most cases — yes.

But does that mean the events themselves literally happened exactly as described? That’s a very different question. The answer is: not necessarily. And often, for me, the answer is probably not.

What we have — and this is actually incredible when you think about it — is an ancient library of texts that tell us what certain people in certain times believed had happened, or wanted to say had happened, or needed to say in order to communicate something about God, or life, or meaning.

So yes, we can trust that we have the texts.

But trusting what the authors claimed within those texts — that’s where interpretation, discernment, criticism, honesty and humility begin.

And remember one final thing — something they probably never told you growing up at your evangelical church.

The Bible was not written for you.

Not a word of it.

You are eavesdropping on ancient conversations when you read it.

What we now call the Bible is something remarkable, which we have to use as we see fit to help us understand the world we came from.

But it isn’t really ours.

It’s theirs.

We just get to read it.

Want some more brief histories?

• A Brief History of Hell

• A Brief History of Sex and Marriage

• A Brief History of Child Sacrifice