We know that the Bible is the word of God. We also know that God did not write a book in heaven and then send an angel to bring it down to earth. How did God write the Bible? Who did He use to write the Bible? Why do we recognize the writings of those who wrote the Bible as God’s word? This lesson will answer these questions and give us additional background concerning the Bible and its completion. It is necessary for us to know the background of the book we love.
[In the first 2500 years of human history, there were no written revelations of God. There were only His verbal instructions, such as His instructions to the forefathers, including Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Genesis we see that before the Bible was written, God often appeared to the forefathers and gave them verbal instructions.]
[Before the Bible was written, although there were no written revelations of God, there were verbal instructions handed down from generation to generation by the fathers. This fact can be proved from inscribed stone tablets discovered in Egypt and Babylon. In 1901, a black pillar was discovered in Persia on which were inscribed some of the laws of the ancient times. Some of them were similar to the Law of Moses, yet it was inscribed five to six hundred years before the time of Moses. This proves that before the Bible was written, among ancient civilizations, there were verbal instructions of God handed down through their forefathers.]
[If we want to know how the Bible was written, we need to know about the alphabets and languages used by the ancient civilizations.]
[Before the flood, it is not known what language man used. According to historical research, the earliest language spoken by man after the flood came from Akkad in the northwest region of ancient Babylon and is called Akkadian. The three terms, “Adam,” “Eden,” and “Sabbath” in the book of Genesis chapter two are probably Akkadian and not Hebrew. Akkadian was originally made of lines. These lines were drawn into wedge shapes. Eventually the writing developed into the cuneiform script. This script was used until approximately two thousand years before Christ, about the time of Abraham.]
[From about two thousand years before Christ, the Babylonian writing of the tribe of Shem replaced Akkadian. We believe that this is the origin of the Aramaic language that came later. This kind of writing was used until approximately six hundred years before Christ, at the time Nebuchadnezzar ruled in Babylon.]
[Ur of the Chaldees was the original dwelling place of Abraham (Gen. 11:31); it was in Babylon. The people there were descendants of the tribe of Shem, and the language they used was the Babylonian language just mentioned. When Abraham was called by God into Canaan, historians all agree that he would naturally have given up his native Babylonian language of Shem and would have taken up the local language of Canaan. This language of Canaan probably became the later Hebrew language, or a part of it. Some have taken the “language of Canaan” in Isaiah 19:18 to mean the language used by the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham. Historians have postulated that a large portion of the subsequent Hebrew language was developed from such a language of Canaan.]
[About six hundred years before Christ, the Israelites were taken captive by the Babylonians to Babylon. They stayed there for a long time. Spontaneously, they gave up Hebrew and adopted the local Aramaic language, which was the Chaldean language. After their return from their captivity, history tells us that they were still using this Aramaic language. At the time of the Lord Jesus, the Romans had already occupied the land of Israel. Although Greek was commonly used throughout the Roman Empire, the Jews nevertheless still used Aramaic among themselves. Only the rabbis spoke and read the Scriptures in Hebrew in the synagogues. If there were some in the synagogues who did not understand Hebrew, there would be someone to translate it into Aramaic.
Many historians have postulated that the language used by the Lord Jesus to speak with the people daily was probably Aramaic, not Hebrew. The words that He spoke in Mark 5:41, “Talitha koum,” and in Mark 15:34, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” were all Aramaic.]
[After the Roman Empire conquered the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and spread the Greek culture everywhere, Greek became the common vernacular language used by all the people in the Roman Empire at that time.
All of these languages are directly or indirectly related to the completion of the Bible.]
[The main body of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew.]
[In the Old Testament, there are four portions which were written in Aramaic. They are Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4—7:28, Ezra 4:8—6:18, and 7:12-26. These four portions are absolutely related to the Aramaic people (that is, the Babylonians). That is why the Bible used Aramaic there instead of Hebrew.]
[The whole New Testament was written in Greek. A few sentences in it were written in Aramaic. They are those already mentioned, “Talitha koum,” and “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.”]