Jono and his school have asked:
When was the Bible written and when did it reach its
final form?
So I did a quick bit of
Googling and this is my answer:
Obviously, scholars like
to argue about this stuff and no one knows exactly for certain!
Traditionally it was
thought that Moses basically wrote the earliest first five books of the Bible
(Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy – sometimes knows as the Torah or
Pentateuch). The early Rabbis date Moses birth to 1391BC and the early church
Father, Jerome,
says he was born in 1592 BC.
The rest of the Old
Testament was written, edited and compiled by lots of different people over a
long period, book by book and with collections of Psalms and Proverbs and so
on.
The Old Testament finishes
400 years before the birth of Jesus. It had almost certainly reached its final
form as we have it today by the time of Jesus and Jesus accepted our Old
Testament.
Jesus almost certainly died
in AD 33 and then the New Testament was written. Maybe some notes were taken in
Jesus’ lifetime. It seems pretty certain to me that some, much, maybe all of
the New Testament was written before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 but some
people think bits of it might be rather later. For example, some people think
John’s Gospel might not have reached its final form until AD 110. However, the oldest
fragment of the New Testament we happen to have today is probably The Rylands
Library Papyrus P52 which is 8.9 cm by 6 cm at its widest and is kept at
Manchester University. It is part of John’s Gospel and is a copy which dates
from 100 – 175 AD.
The letters and books of
the New Testament circulated separately and together from very early on and the
church basically agreed that the writings from the Apostles and their circle
belonged to the Bible, but there continued to be some arguments about whether
some books should be in or out.
The first official list of
New Testament books as authoritative exactly the same as ours which we know of
comes from Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria’s Easter letter
of AD 367. The Catholic Church formally listed the decision on
which books belong to the Bible in AD 382 at the Council of Rome.
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