COMPOSITION & REACH
The composition of the Bible is unique in many ways. Consider the following.
The Bible is a collection of 66 books and letters written over 1,500 years.
These books/letters were written by 40 authors in a wide variety of geographic, political, and socioeconomic settings.
Its authors came from a wide range of positions in life. Moses was a prince of Egypt, then an outcast shepherd, and finally the leader of Israel; Solomon and David were kings; Isaiah was a prophet; Daniel was a senior advisor to the ruler of Babylon; Amos was a shepherd and farmer; Matthew was a tax collector; Peter was a fisherman; Luke was a doctor; and Paul was a rabbi.
Its authors wrote under a broad range of conditions, including people writing from prison, captivity, the wilderness, and in palaces.
The Bible was written on three continents.
It was written in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek).
It was written in various tones (e.g., despair, joy, admonition, instruction, etc.).
It was written by men under the inspiration of God. God revealed his teachings and will to them in various ways including speaking to them directly, in dreams, in visions, and via miracles.[1]
While its authors carefully recorded God’s messages,[2] they also wrote in a way that reflected their individual personalities, emotions, literary styles, and cultural/historical settings. The Bible touches on every controversial topic you can imagine (e.g., adultery, murder, sexuality, money…).
Despite the incredible diversity described above, the Bible’s core message and teachings are unified and consistent throughout. From Genesis through Revelation, the Bible describes God’s desire to have a relationship with the people He created; our repeated rejection of Him; the reconciliation He offers; and what our lives will be like in this lifetime and after death if we accept His offer.
Creation, a falling out, redemption, and restoration. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s a common theme in much of man’s writings, movies, TV shows, etc. Boy meets girl, they fight, he comes after her, and they live happily ever after. We all want things to turn out like this. This is inherent in us because it mirrors the unfolding relationship between God and man.
Another way to look at the cohesiveness of the Bible is to consider the many instances where Old Testament characters and stories provide a foreshadowing of New Testament events. This is known as typology. The New Testament is seen in the Old.
An examination of the scriptures reveals numerous examples like: The selection of a lamb without blemish for sacrifice at Passover, a foreshadowing of Christ’s perfect sacrifice; Jonah’s time in the belly of the whale, which foreshadowed Christ’s time in the grave; the innermost room of the tabernacle representing heaven, whose curtain was torn apart when Jesus died symbolizing our direct access to God; a seed needing to die before being reborn as a new plant, and all of us needing to die to sin in order to be born again in Christ; and Joseph being sold into slavery for the going rate in silver, and Jesus later betrayed for a similar amount of silver.
To get a broader sense of the cohesiveness of the Bible, a pastor named Christoph Römhild and a researcher named Chris Harrison teamed up to visually represent all of the cross references contained in the Lutheran Bible. There are 63,779 of them. Cross references include things like direct quotations of Old Testament scriptures in the New Testament; allusions to older verses; connections between verses that teach the same principal; references to previously cited incidents or Biblical events; people, places and events that are mentioned in more than one location; and even corrections of misinterpretations of Scripture from older books in the Bible.
The multi-colored, half-sphere image associated with this chapter is the result of Christoph and Chris’ work. The chapters of the Bible run along the horizontal axis at the bottom of the image and each cross reference is represented by a single arc whose color reflects the distance between books. Commenting on the image, Dr. George H. Guthrie writes:
Consider the fact that the books of the Bible were written in 3 languages (Hebrew, Greek, and a bit of Aramaic), over a millennium and a half, in a variety of types of literature, by about 40 different people, who lived in sometimes radically different cultures and across a geographical chunk of the world that spans about 2,500 miles. In the face of such diversity, the unity and flow of the Bible’s meta-narrative is breathtaking. In the image above, notice not only the comprehensiveness of touchpoints for the references (they fill the whole span), but also the clear symmetry and balance.[3]
Regarding the authority of Scripture, Guthrie writes:
The authors of Scripture received what had gone before them as foundational and as carrying authority. For instance, there are approximately 350 quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament and at least 2300 allusions, not to mention many places where an Old Testament person, place, or institution is mentioned without a particular passage in mind. Yet, as the image above makes clear, we also have extensive cross-references between books of the Old Testament (e.g., the Psalms or Prophets refer back to the Pentateuch or the Historical Books), as well as between books of the New Testament (e.g., at times there is an interrelationship between the Gospels and Acts and the rest of the New Testament, such as when the letters or Hebrews or Revelation refer to the events of Jesus’s life, ministry, passion, resurrection, and exaltation). Scriptures or biblical events often are appealed to in order to reinforce what a particular writer is communicating. So authoritative texts are in the very DNA of Judaism and Early Christianity.[4]
The cohesiveness of the Bible seems obvious from this image.
Reach and Influence
The Bible is unique in its reach. To quote Russell Ash, the Bible is “by far the bestselling book of all time.”[5] In his book The Top Ten of Everything he notes, “The Bible Society’s attempt to calculate the number [of Bibles] printed between 1816 and 1975 produced the figure of 2.458 billion. A more recent survey for the years up to 1992 put it closer to 6 billion in more than 2,000 languages and dialects.”[6] The Gideons International organization alone gave away 88 million Bibles in 2014 and has given away two billion Bibles and New Testaments since 1908.[7]
The Bible is also unique in its influence. According to Philip Yancey,[8] the historian H.G. Wells (a non-Christian) once said, “The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is ‘What did he leave to grow?’ Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.” Of course, almost all of the information we have about Jesus comes from the Bible, so its influence is profound. Consider the words of historian Philip Schaff as quoted by Josh McDowell:
This Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.”[9]
Survival
A brief word on the Bible’s survival over the centuries is also worth noting. Consider the following text from the book I’m Glad You Asked:
“The scriptures have survived through time, persecution and criticism. There have been numerous attempts to burn, ban, and systematically eliminate the Bible, but all have failed. The Bible has been subjected to more abuse, perversion, destructive criticism, and pure hate than any other book. Yet it continues to stand the test of time while its critics are refuted or forgotten.”[10]
One example is the Roman emperor Diocletian’s 303 A.D. edict that Christians cease in their worship and that their scriptures be destroyed. Merely ten years later, Constantine (the subsequent emperor) issued the edict of Milan bestowing, for the first time, “imperial favor on Christianity in the empire.”[11]
The Bible’s survivability is one of its many unique features.
FOOTNOTES
[1] For some examples, see Exodus 3; Genesis 37:1-11; and Daniel 7.
[2] For some examples, see Deuteronomy 4:2 and Revelation 22:18-19.
[3] This May Be the Coolest "Bible" Image You Have Ever Seen: 4 Things We Learn from It — George H Guthrie
[4] Ibid.
[5] Russell Ash, The Top 10 of Everything, 1997 , DK Publishing, 1996, pages 112-113. (Cited at http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/bestsellerFARQ.html)
[6] Ibid.
[7] http://www.gideons.org/AboutUs/WorldwideImpact.aspx
[8] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995, page 17.
[9] Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict, Volume 1. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s life Publishers, Inc., 1979, Pages 19-22.
[10] Boa & Larry Moody, I’m Glad You Asked. Colorado Springs, Co.: Victor Books/SP Publications, Inc., 1994, page 100.
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I