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This history of the Bible has an abundance of information, most of it in bullet points. Reading this page straight through could be overwhelming!
I recommend bookmarking this page, then coming back to it and leafing through the bullet points. They're very interesting, and repeated visits will give you time to consider what they mean.
Before you go on. Today we use "The Word of God" interchangeably with the Bible. In other words, you can simply say you "follow the Word," and everyone assumes you mean the Bible. That is not how the apostles and their churches used the term!
Looking for a deeper look at the history of the Bible?
I recommend that all Evangelicals get their hands on A High View of Scripture? by Craig Allert. That's a book by an Evangelical for Evangelicals which looks at issues most Evangelicals refuse to look at.
Are you looking for the best Bible translation?
Obviously, the first churches started by the apostles did not have a New Testament like ours. Not only was there no printing press, but the New Testament writings weren't completed until at least close to A.D. 90, some 60 years after Jesus' death.
The last New Testament writings would be those from John. It is Christian testimony—especially Irenaeus, who says he got it from a man named Papias who knew John—that says John wrote his Gospel and letters in the A.D. 90's.
The rest of the NT writings are very difficult to date, except a few of Paul's letters. There's just not much evidence with which to work.
The Gospels in the history of the Bible are dated anywhere from A.D. 60 to 120. There are scholars who date them later, but mostly those are jealous modern Gnostics, who wish that gnosticism was actually real Christianity. There really isn't any doubt that the accepted history of mainline Christianity and gnosticism is accurate.
Around A.D. 150 Justin Martyr makes reference to "the memoirs of the apostles," and he quotes all four Gospels. Earlier writers show a knowledge of Gospel stories and sayings, but there's no way to prove they're quoting any of the Gospels directly. They don't say "it is written," when they use terminology that's in the Gospels.
By A.D. 185, Irenaeus says that there can only be 4 Gospels, just as their are only four cardinal directions. His reasons are somewhat exotic—and unbelievable to me—but the point is that the 4 Gospels were definitely the only accepted Gospels by A.D. 185.
Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and others reference other Gospels, such as an unknown Gospel of the Egyptians, which may have been the Gospel of Thomas. It is clear, though, that they no longer considered any but the four we know to be Scripture.
Q stands for Quelle, the German word for source. It is a supposed collection of the sayings—and possibly stories—of Jesus that was used to write the Gospels
Personally, I don't believe there's enough evidence to assume there's a written Q, but my expertise is the 2nd century writings, not the history of the Gospels. That issue is very complicated.
Again, though, the more I read the history of the Bible, the more it looks like there's a lot of guessing. I'm for listening to those to whom the Gospels were committed, the Church.
The Pre-Nicene writers say that Matthew was orginally written in Hebrew (e.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies III:1:1). I've heard it suggested that the Hebrew version of Matthew is the real Q.
Um, but that's just someone's guess
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The history of the Bible gives strong testimony to Paul's letters, but there are some that are doubted even by Christian scholars.
Those that demand conclusive evidence limit Paul's true letters to just a few. For the most part, though, scholars accept 10 of Paul's letters, the exceptions being the pastoral letters: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (and Hebrews, which almost no one thinks was written by Paul).
The arguments are difficult to follow unless you devote a lot of time to studying the history of the Bible. Some argue that the pastoral letters don't have Paul's type of reasoning or wording. Personally, I think that if Paul really went to prison, was released, then went to Spain and Great Britain, as the early Christians said he did, then when he returned, he may have been a much different person and used different wording.
I'm a believer in God. 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus have been greatly used by God for 2,000 years now. I don't believe they are forgeries.
There is evidence that is the case. Polycarp quotes both 1 and 2 Timothy in his early 2nd century letter to the Philippians. Since he received a letter from Ignatius in A.D. 107 or 116, his testimony to the history of the Bible is significant.
It's important to point out that skeptics of the New Testament are arguing from what they DON'T know, not from what they do know. We cannot know that Paul wrote the pastoral epistles because evidence concerning their authorship is almost non-existent. However, there's no strong evidence he did not write it.
There's some other things we know about the history of the Bible:
The general epistles are those that are not addressed to a specific person or church. Those include Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John.
No one knows who wrote Hebrews. This was argued about even in the early church.
Now we come to the topic that I most want to cover in the history of the Bible: the "canon."
Simply put, the churches before Nicaea did not have a canon. They had books they called Scripture and which they believed were inspired, but it was not a set list of books.
They quoted from more books than we do, commonly referencing books like Ecclesiasticus and Tobit (which are included in the Roman Catholic Bible), the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Book of Enoch (which is only in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible).
There are some books, however, that were rarely quoted or only quoted in the East or West, which are Hebrews, James, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. In fact, to this day the "Assyrian Orthodox Church of the East" Bible ends at 1 John.
I promised to tell you when I'm telling you something that is controversial among scholars. The history of the Bible is one of them, but it shouldn't be.
There are scholars who wish that the early church had a set canon. There's no evidence for it and lots of real obvious evidence against it.
I already told you that there was no set "Bible" in the apostles' churches. There were no printing shops to bind scrolls or papyrii together for them.
There are a lot of books quoted by the early churches that we don't use much anymore. Some of them are very interesting; here's why:
A good example is Matthew 4:10, where Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, but he adds, " … and him only shall you serve." That last phrase is found only in the LXX.
The LXX, despite all the minor differences, is very similar to our modern Bibles, which are based on the Hebrew Masoretic text. There are two notable exceptions. Jeremiah and Job in the LXX are each about 1/6 shorter than the Masoretic text!
The LXX is the Old Testament of choice for the Orthodox churches. Their "Apocrypha" is larger even than the Roman Catholics "Apocrypha." From experience, I can tell you it's hard to get an Orthodox believer to give you a good list of what books are in their Old Testament. The most notable extra books are 3 and 4 Maccabees and 2 Esdras (which is a very interesting read).
There's a lot more that could be said about the history of the Bible, but it's more than what one web page can handle.
This page is already pretty intense. If you want to know more, take a deep breath and plunge into A High View of Scripture?.