A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BIBLE

The Bible began as oral literature thousands of years ago.

The original handwritten manuscripts of the Bible have long since vanished. All that remains are hand-written copies that were recopied over and over again.

The oldest Greek manuscripts of large parts of the Bible date to the fourth century A.D. Older papyrus fragments of the New Testament, written in Greek, do exist.

The name Bible comes from a Greek word that means books.

Scrolls, including one of the entire book of Isaiah, were discovered in 1947 in a cave near the Dead Sea. The scrolls date back to Jesus' time.

A priest, John Wycliffe, and his followers completed the first English translation of the Bible in 1384. That Bible was written entirely by hand.

The first printed Bible was published between 1450 and 1456 in Mainz, Germany. Forty-eight copies of this Bible and some fragments still exist.

The first complete, printed Bible in English was published in 1535.

In 1604, King James I of England authorized a committee of about 50 scholars to revise earlier English translations of the Bible. The new version appeared in 1611 and continues to be popular today.

In 1663, the first Bible was printed in America in the language of the Massachusetts Indians. The New Testament had been published two years earlier.

The first American Bible in English was the Robert Aitken Bible in the King James Version, printed in Philadelphia. It was approved and recommended by Congress in 1782.

Source: American Bible Society