Title: The Bible in its Making: The most Wonderful Book in the World
Author: Mildred Duff
Noel Hope
Release date: January 9, 2010 [eBook #30908]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
One great universal law runs through the realm of nature. Our Saviour gave it in a sentence: 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.'
It is with the desire to show that the same law rules in another of God's creations—The Bible—that this little volume has been prepared.
The Bible has as literally 'grown' as has an oak tree; and probably there is no more likeness between the Bible as we know it to-day and its earliest beginning, than we find between the mighty tree, and the acorn from which it sprang.
The subject is so vast that we have not attempted anything beyond the briefest outline. Our purpose has been merely to give some idea of the origin of the Bible books, up to the measure of our present light upon the subject, and also to show the purpose for which they were written.
But if our readers, by seeing something of the wonder and glory of the Holy Scriptures, are able to catch a glimpse of the Creator's mind behind the whole, our work will not have been in vain.
MILDRED DUFF.
here is only one Book that never grows old.
For thousands of years men have been writing books. Most books are forgotten soon after they are written; a few of the best and wisest are remembered for a time.
But all at last grow old; new discoveries are made; new ideas arise; the old books are out of date; their usefulness is at an end. Students are the only people who still care to read them.
The nations to which the authors of these first books belonged have passed away, the languages in which they were written are 'dead'—that is, they have ceased to be used in daily life in any part of the world.
Broken bits and torn fragments of some of the early books may be seen in the glass cases of museums. Learned men pore over the fragments, and try to piece them together, to find out their meaning once again; but no one else cares much whether they mean anything or not. For the books are dead. They cannot touch the heart of any human being; they have nothing to do with the busy world of living men and women any more.
Now, our Bible was first written in these ancient languages: is it, therefore, to be classed among the 'dead' books of the world?
No, indeed. The fact alone that the Word of God can be read to-day in 412 living languages proves clearly that it is no dead book; and when we remember that last year 5,000,000 new copies of the Bible were sent into the busy working world for men and women by one Society alone, we see how truly 'alive' it must be.
Nations may pass, languages die, the whole world may change, yet the Bible will live on. Why is this?
Because in the Bible alone, of all the books seen on this earth, there is found a message for every man, woman, or child who has ever lived or will live while the world lasts:
It is the Message of God's Salvation through His Son Jesus Christ.
The message is for all; for the cleverest white man, the most ignorant savage; for the black man of Africa, the yellow man of China, the tawny little man who lives among the icefields of the Arctic Circle.
It does not matter who the person is, nor where he lives; a living force exists in the Bible that will help every human being who acts upon its words to become one of God's true sons and soldiers. No human wisdom can explain this.
The Bible tells us about Christ. Before Christ came all teaching led up to Him. He is the only safe Guide for our daily life. Through His death alone we have hope for the future. From the first page to the last the Bible speaks of Christ. This is the secret of its wondrous power.
'These are the words which I spake 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.' (Luke xxiv. 44.)
Although we speak of the Bible as one Book, because it tells one world-wide story, yet this one Book is made up of many books—of a whole library of books in fact.
Go into a library, look at the well-stocked shelves. Here is a volume of history, here a book of beautiful poetry, here a life of a great and noble warrior. This book was written only last year, this one appeared many years before you were born.
Just so is it with the books of the Bible.
For more than a thousand years God was calling the best and wisest men of the Jewish nation to write for His Book. Some of the authors were rich and learned; many were humble and poor. Kings wrote for it; a shepherd-boy; a captive lad who had been carried away as a slave into a strange land; a great leader; a humble fruit-gatherer; a hated tax-collector; a tent-maker; many poor fishermen. God found work for them all.
There are sixty-six books in the Bible, written by at least forty different authors. Books on history; collections of sacred songs; lives of good men and women; stirring appeals to the sinful. God chose the men best fitted to write each part. He called them to His work; He spoke to their hearts; He put His Spirit into their minds.
In these days those who read God's Word often forget what old, old writings the first books in the Bible are, and how everything has changed since they were written.
Seeing the words so clearly printed on fine white paper, readers do not stop to think that they have come down to us from the days when the greatest nations in the world wrote their best books on lumps of clay, or on rough, brittle paper made from brown reeds.
So these Bible readers grow impatient, and because they cannot understand everything all at once, some are even foolish enough to give up reading the Old Testament altogether.
But the things that are hard to understand are only hard because we are still so ignorant. Whenever any new discovery about the ancient times has been made it has always shown us how exactly true the Bible is.
Some years ago, just at the time when the doubts and carpings were at their worst, when those people who did not trust God even declared that many of the cities and kings mentioned in the Old Testament had never existed at all, a wonderful thing happened. God allowed the old cities themselves to be brought to light once more.
Deep under the earth they were found, with their beautiful palaces, libraries full of books, and long picture-galleries, lined from end to end with stone and marble slabs, on which were cut portraits of the very kings whose existence the people were beginning to doubt! This is how it happened.
'The Bible does not describe things as they really were,' said some people. 'In Old Testament times, for instance, the nations were very rough and ignorant; as for Moses—who is supposed to have written the first books of the Bible—it is most doubtful whether he ever learned to read and write at all.'
'But Moses was brought up in Egypt, and the Egyptians were very learned; the Bible says so,' answered others.
'The man who wrote those words in the Bible may have made a mistake. It is true that the ruins of old Egyptian temples and palaces are covered with strange figures and signs; but who can say now whether they mean anything or not?'
Those who trusted in God's Word could not answer these questions; but just at this time God allowed the first great discovery to be made; for the moment had at last come when all thoughtful men and women needed to be able to settle these questions for themselves.
In the year 1799 a French officer who was in Egypt with Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone.
You may see this stone in the British Museum. It is a great block of black marble. On the smooth side, cut deeply in the stone, are a number of lines of ancient writing. Many stones covered with ancient writing had been found before, but this one is different from all the rest.
The lines at the top of the stone are in the strange old Egyptian picture-writing, which learned men have agreed to call 'Hieroglyphic'; that is, 'writing in pictures.' This was a very special kind of writing in ancient Egypt, and generally kept for important occasions. The lines in the middle give the same words, but in the ordinary handwriting used for correspondence in ancient Egypt; and last of all is found a translation of the Egyptian words written in ancient Greek.
This old kind of Greek is not spoken in daily life by any people to-day, but many learned men can read and write it with ease; so that, you see, by the help of the Greek translation, the Rosetta Stone became a key for discovering the meaning of both kinds of ancient Egyptian letters. Thus, by the help of the Rosetta Stone, and after years of patient labour, the long-dead language could be read once more.
Egypt—the land into which Joseph was sold, where the Israelites became a nation, and Moses was born and educated! How great a joy to read the words carved on temple walls, or in palace halls; and to find with each word read how exactly the Egypt of ancient days is described in the Bible!
The dress the people wore, the food they ate, the way they spoke to their kings, the description of their funerals, the very name of their famous river, and the words they used to describe the plants, insects, and cattle of Egypt—all these are found in the Bible and are proofs of the care with which Moses wrote of the land of his birth.
But other nations besides the Egyptians are mentioned in the Bible; and about them also grave doubts arose. Almost all the Old Testament prophets cried out against the wickedness of Assyria and Babylon, and foretold the awful punishment which God would bring upon them for their pride and cruelty, unless they repented.
They did not repent; destruction came upon them; their very names were forgotten, and their cities as utterly lost to the world as though they had never existed.
'Nineveh, Babylon? There were such cities once, perhaps; but as for the kings of whom the Bible speaks—Sennacherib, who came up against Jerusalem, and was driven back through the prayers of God's servants, Isaiah and King Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 19); Nebuchadnezzar, who carried Daniel away into Babylon; Ahasuerus, who reigned "from India even unto Ethiopia" (Esther)—well, if they ever lived at all, they were certainly not the kind of kings spoken of in the Old Testament. But it all happened so long ago that we cannot expect to understand much about it now.'
So the questioners settled the matter in their own minds; but God had the answer to their questions all ready for them.
He put into the hearts of some brave men the idea of going out to the desolate plains, 'empty and void, and waste' (Nahum ii. 10), the plains that had once been the rich empires of Assyria and Babylon, and there to search patiently for some trace of the splendid cities of old.
Very wonderful is the story of how these searchers found them.
Nineveh had been lying buried under huge mounds of rubbish for more than two thousand years. Now, just at the time when her testimony was needed, the ruined halls of her majestic palaces were once more brought to the light of day.
What had been the names of these grim kings of old, whose stern-faced figures were sculptured on the walls? Could any among them be the fierce Assyrian kings mentioned in the Bible?
If only the strange wedge-shaped letters that covered every vacant space on the stone slabs could be read, what a message from the past they would reveal.
Once again clever men set to work and persevered until the strange letters were deciphered, and the palace-walls gave up their secrets. Here was King Sennacherib; here Tiglath-pileser (2 Kings xv. 29); here Esarhaddon (2 Kings xix. 37). Oh, how wonderful to look at the old-time portraits which had been drawn from the men themselves!
'Well, although the Egyptians and Assyrians prove to have been great nations in the time of Moses, they had no communication with each other except in war time; they spoke different languages, wrote in altogether different styles, and had very different ideas about everything. Nations kept to themselves in those days. What the Bible says of their intercourse must be wrong.'
This all the clever people were quite sure about, but once again God showed them their mistake.
Twenty-five years ago an Egyptian peasant woman was walking among the ruins of an ancient Egyptian city—a city built before the time of Moses. Bright yellow sand had drifted over the broken columns and painted pavements of what had once been the palace of a great king. But the peasant woman did not care for that. Was there anything hidden in the sand that she could sell? This was all her thought.
Suddenly her foot struck against something hard in the sand. She looked down. Could it be a stone?
No, it was not a stone, but a queer oblong lump, or tablet of clay, hardened into a brick, and covered with strange marks that looked like writing. She wondered at it, for with all her findings in the ruins she had never come upon anything like this before.
She showed the tablet to her friends, and they dug down deep in the sand, and found whole sackfuls of baked clay tablets. But when the dealer in curiosities saw the lumps of baked clay he shook his head, and would give very little money for them.
After a while some of the bricks were taken to Paris and London.
'These tablets could not have been found in Egypt,' decided the learned professors; 'they are either imitations, or they were found somewhere else. These are clay letters, and must have been written in Assyria or Babylonia. No Egyptian could have understood a word of them.'
Yet the tablets had been found in Egypt, and had been read by the king of Egypt's scribes, for the peasant woman, had all unknowingly discovered what remained of the Foreign Office belonging to the old Egyptian nation, and thus we see that the Egyptians of Moses' time could read and write foreign languages as easily as we can to-day read and write French or German!
od always chooses the right kind of people to do His work. Not only so, He always gives to those whom He chooses just the sort of life which will best prepare them for the work He will one day call them to do.
That is why God put it into the heart of Pharaoh's daughter to bring up Moses as her own son in the Egyptian palace.
The most important part of Moses' training was that his heart should be right with God, and therefore he was allowed to remain with his Hebrew parents during his early years. There he learned to love and serve the one true God. Without that knowledge no education can make a man or woman fit to be a blessing to the world.
But after this God gave him another training. The man who should be called to write the first words of God's Book would need a very special education. Most likely some of the Children of Israel could read and write, for we know there were plenty of books and good schools in Moses' time, but they certainly did not make such good scholars as the Egyptians.
'And the child grew and she (his mother) brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.' (Exodus ii. 10.)
In those few words the Bible shows us the Egyptian side of Moses' education.
And a very thorough education it must have been, for the Egyptians were the most highly cultured people in the world in those days, and we know that 'Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.' (Acts vii. 22.)
The Egypt of Moses' time was very different from the Egypt of to-day. Among all the great nations it held the first place; for the people of Egypt were more clever, and rich; their gardens more beautiful, their cornfields and orchards more fruitful than those of the dwellers in any other land.
Again, of all the peoples in the world the Egyptians were looked upon at that time as the most religious. From one end to another the land was full of temples, many of them so huge in size, and so magnificent with carvings and paintings, that even their poor ruins—the great columns shattered or fallen, the enormous walls tottering and broken—are still the wonder of the world.
Every great city had its schools and colleges. Clever men devoted their whole lives to teaching in these colleges and to writing learned books, just as they do in the cities of Europe and America to-day. These men were called 'scribes,' that is, 'writers.' Moses, a boy brought up in the royal palace, would have the best and most learned scribes for his teachers.
A fragment of an old Egyptian book describing the duties of a lad in the scribes' school has been found. It tells how the schoolmaster wakes the boys very early in the morning. 'The books are already in the hands of thy companions,' he cries; 'put on thy garments, call for thy sandals.'
If the lad does not make haste he is severely punished; if he is not attentive in school the master speaks to him very seriously indeed. 'Let thy mouth read the book in thy hand, and take advice from those who know more than thou dost!'
He has to write many copies, and as he gets he learns to compose business letters to his master; before he is fourteen he is most likely a clerk in a government office, and must continue his studies at the same time.
The letters and copies of a schoolboy who lived three thousand years ago have been discovered. How many bad marks did his teacher give him, do you think, when he had to correct that carelessly written capital?
So great a respect had the Egyptians for writing that they used to say, 'The great god Thoth invented letters; no human being could have given anything so wonderful and useful to the world.'
Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, drawing, an Egyptian lad was supposed to study all these, and as we have seen, those lads who were trained for work in the Foreign Office had to learn other languages as well; they had also to read and write 'cuneiform'—the name given to the strange wedge-shaped letters of Assyria and Babylonia.
All the letters from the people of Canaan to the Egyptian king and his Foreign Office were written in cuneiform.
Chinese is supposed to be the most difficult language to learn in our day; but the ancient cuneiform was certainly quite as complicated as Chinese. The cuneiform had no real alphabet, only 'signs.' There were five hundred simple signs, and nearly as many compound signs, so that the student had to begin with a thousand different signs to memorize. Yes, boys had their troubles even in those days.
Now, as Moses grew older and learned more, he must often have felt very thoughtful and sad. So many books, so many ideas, so many stories of cruel gods and evil spirits—where was the truth to be found? No one seemed to remember the One True God, the God of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Very likely a Babylonian book written in cuneiform, and pretending to describe the Creation of the world, and the story of the Ark and the great Flood found its way into Egypt. Many copies of this book existed in Moses' day; part of a later copy was found a short time ago in the ruins of the library of a great Assyrian king, and is now to be seen in the British Museum. A strange book it is. The words were not written, remember, but pricked down on a large flat tablet of clay.
If Moses read such a book as this, it must have troubled and puzzled him very much. For it is a heathen book, in which the beautiful clear story of the Creation of the world is all darkened and spoilt. The Babylonian who wrote the book, and the Assyrians who copied it, were all descended from Noah, and therefore some dim remembrance of God's dealings with the world still lingered in their hearts; but as the time passed they had grown farther from the truth. That is why the oldest copies of these books are always the best; the heathen had not had time to separate themselves so completely from God.
'In the old, old days,' they said, 'there were not so many gods as there are now'; and some of the most learned heathen even believed that in the beginning there was but one God. 'Afterwards many others sprang up,' they declared.
'In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth.' (Genesis i. 1.) Oh, how far the nations had wandered already from the greatest, deepest truth which the world can know! How sad to think that horrible nightmare stories of evil spirits and cruel gods should have come between men's souls and the loving Father and Creator of all!
Yes; it was time, indeed, that the first words of the Bible should be written, and that a stream of pure truth should begin to flow through the world.
But Moses had much to do for God before he could write one word of his part of the Bible.
We know how his life of learning and splendour came to a sudden end; he fled from Egypt, and became a shepherd in the land of Midian; and there in Midian God called him to the great work of leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt towards the Promised Land.
Terrible troubles had come upon God's people in the land of Goshen.[1] For the most selfish and cruel Pharaoh who ever reigned over Egypt had determined to treat the people who had come to live in Egypt, at the invitation of a former Pharaoh, just as though they were captives taken in battle.
Many of the old ruins in Egypt are covered with writings describing his cruelties. He killed all who rebelled against him, and condemned whole nations to wear out their lives by working for him in the gold mines, or granite quarries, or by making endless stores of bricks; he cared for no man's life if only he could be called the richest king in the world.
'And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses,' (Exodus i. 11) that is, store-cities. In Egypt many store-cities were needed because corn was more plentiful there than in any other country.
'Pithom—where was Pithom?' So people were asking a few years ago, and because there was no answer to that question they began to doubt. Had there ever been such a city?
But in the year 1884 the earth gave up another of its secrets—the ruins of Pithom were found, buried deep in the dust; and the remains of great store-houses built of rough bricks, mixed with chopped straw (Exodus v.) and stamped with the name of the cruel Pharaoh (Ramesis the Second) were laid bare once more.[2]
What a pity some readers had not waited a little longer before doubting the truth of the Bible!
'And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words.' (Exodus xxxiv. 27.) So it was at last that God called Moses to begin the great work of writing the Bible, just as He had called him to lead the people out of Egypt; just as by His Spirit He calls men and women to do His work to-day.
How did Moses write the first words of the Bible? What kind of letters and what language did he use?
These are great questions. We know at least that he could have his choice between two or three different kinds of letters and materials.
Perhaps he wrote the first words of the Bible on rolls of papyrus paper with a soft reed pen, in the manner of the Egyptian scribes.
Hundreds of these rolls have been found in Egypt: poems, histories, novels, hymns to the Egyptian gods; and some of these writings are at least as old as the time of Moses. The Egyptian climate is so fine and dry, and the Egyptians stored the rolls so carefully in the tombs of their kings, that the fragile papyrus—that is, reed-paper—has not rotted away, as would have been the case in any other country.
Certainly in after years the Jews used the same shaped books as the Egyptians. Indeed, the Jews' Bible—that is, the Old Testament—was still called 'a roll of a book' in the days of Jeremiah. (Jeremiah xxxvi. 2.)
Or perhaps Moses wrote on tablets of clay like those used by the great empires of Babylon and Assyria, and by the people of Canaan. Clay was cheap enough; all one had to do was to mould moist clay into a smooth tablet, and then to prick words on it with a metal pen. The prophet Jeremiah mentions this kind of book also. (Jeremiah xvii. 1.)
Most likely, however, Moses wrote on parchment made from the skins of sheep and goats. The Children of Israel kept large flocks, and could supply him with as many skins as he wanted.
And in what language did he write?
Perhaps even the very first words were written in Hebrew; we know that in later times the prophets and historians of the Jews wrote in Hebrew.
But we must remember that languages alter as years pass on. The Hebrew of Moses' time could only have been an ancient kind of Hebrew, very different from the Hebrew of to-day. Does this surprise you? Why, you and I could hardly read one word of the English written in England even a thousand years ago!
About the middle of the last century a German missionary found a large carved stone in that part of Palestine which used to be called Moab. This wonderful stone, which is black and shaped something like a tombstone, is covered with writing. It is called 'The Moabite Stone,' and was set up by Mesha, king of Moab. (2 Kings iii. 4.) The writing on it is neither Egyptian nor cuneiform, but a very ancient kind of Hebrew.
Of course, this does not take us back actually to the days of Moses, but still it is so old that Moses may well have used the same kind of writing.
We have seen that most nations in those old times had their books, and we know that each nation had always one book that it valued more than the rest. This was the book that told the people about their religion, and the gods in whom they believed.
In most of these books some grains of truth were found. All the nations of the world are but one great family, you know, and even the most ignorant people were not without some knowledge.
The heathen nations of Moses' time therefore remembered dimly some of God's dealings with the world; they were so blinded by their heathen worship, that no atom of fresh light could reach them, and little by little they drifted further into the darkness.
But, though tiny fragments of truth are to be found in their books, not one word is to be traced in any book of the most precious truth of all until God revealed it to His servant Moses.
This makes our Bible so wonderful and different from all other books: it is a revelation—that is, something which comes to us from God and which we could never have known without His help.
From first to last the Bible is written to teach us about Christ. Throughout the whole of the Old Testament Christ is referred to as the coming Saviour, or Messiah, which you know, is the Hebrew word for Christ.
Christ is to bruise the serpent's head. (Genesis iii. 15.) In Him all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. (Genesis xxii. 18.) He is the Star that shall come out of Jacob. (Numbers xxiv. 17.) When the Lamb of the Passover was killed, and the people taught they could only escape from death through the sprinkled blood, this was a type or picture of Salvation through the Blood of Jesus.
When at last the Saviour came, the Jews rejected Him and would not accept Him as the Messiah. Then He said to them: 'Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.' (John v. 46.)
[1] The Egyptians spelt 'Goshen' 'Kosem.' An old writing says, 'The country is not cultivated, but left as a pasture for cattle because of the stranger.'
[2] Some of these bricks are in the British Museum.
e now begin to understand a little of the very beginning of God's Book—of the times in which it was written, the materials used by its first author, and the different kinds of writing from which he had to choose; but we must go a step farther.
How much did Moses know about the history of his forefathers, Abraham and Jacob, and of all the old nations and kings mentioned in Genesis, before God called him to the great work of writing his part of the Bible?
We believe that he knew a great deal about them all.
Most thoughtful young people like to read right through their Bibles, and perhaps you have been perplexed to find that many parts of the Old Testament are both puzzling and dry. Of what use, then, can these chapters be? you have perhaps asked yourself. Is it not all God's Book?
But you must not let this trouble you. Every passage, every verse has its special place and object. Not a line of God's Book could be taken away without serious loss to the whole.
'What, all those long lists of the queer names of people we never hear of again?' asks some one. 'Why, I dread those chapters. I once had to read Genesis x. aloud, and I shall never forget it!'
Those who feel like this will be surprised to know that many of the most learned men of our own days are giving much time and thought to the careful and patient study of this very list of names; and the more carefully they study it, the fuller and wider does the subject become.
'Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.' (Genesis x. 10.) The ruins of all these great cities and kingdoms have now been found. They were old before Moses was born; indeed, they were so old that their names were only to be found in ancient books; even the very language spoken by some of these nations had been forgotten by all save the learned scribes of Babylonia and Assyria.
And yet we find these names accurately given in Genesis; had they been missing from its pages, the Bible would give us no true idea of the beginnings of history. Remember this when next you are tempted to feel impatient at the awkward syllables.
Again, in Genesis xiv. we read the names of the kings who governed nine nations in the time of Abraham, and of how they fought together 'four kings with five' (verse 9) three hundred years before Moses was born.
Until a very few years ago the Bible was the only Book that told us about these ancient kings and kingdoms.
And people said, 'The man who wrote that chapter did not really know anything; he just collected a pack of old stories that had been repeated over and over again with so many exaggerations and alterations that at last there was scarcely a word of truth left in them.'
Since this foolish conclusion was arrived at many new discoveries have been made, the broken fragments of old tablets have been pieced together and read, and the names of all the nine kings brought to light once more.
Certain it is that Moses, with the help of the writings which we now know must have existed in his time, would have but little difficulty in writing those parts of Genesis which tell us the history of some of the most ancient nations of the world. For when God gives a man some work to do, He always helps him to do it. To those who really trust Him, and have patience to work on, the help they need always comes, the difficult path is made smooth. This has been the experience of God's servants in all times.