Page 68 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

attempts to suggest how they should be translated - nothing! The words simply mean a female cow that
is three years old.

The Rule of thumb: If the literal sense makes sense, seek no other sense.”

Writing the Words down…

In translating the Bible, the translators had to write on some sort of material. The OT was written
mainly on animal skins which were sewed together in long strips and rolled up to form scrolls. Some
scrolls were as long as 35 feet and were difficult to handle. The scrolls were read from back to front.
This is what Jesus read in the temple when reading from Isaiah. The scrolls were kept in the synagogues
or temples and very few people had possession of a copy.

The New Testament was written on papyrus using the book style (codex) we are used to today. The
copyist could write on both sides of the papyrus. Papyrus was relatively inexpensive but did not last
long as it easily decayed as most plant material does. Copies of the original manuscripts and letters
were made on papyrus and distributed among the churches. People of means sometimes had a copy
made for their library, however, most Christians were poor
and so most all copies were made on papyrus. The church
was persecuted for almost 200 years by Rome.

th
In the 4 century, things changed. Christianity was
recognized as the state religion of Rome and became more
affluent. While Vellum, mostly made of animal skin, was
expensive, it was the material of choice, and the books would
last hundreds of years.

For almost 800 years, the copies of the NT were written in
“Uncial” (Un’ she el) format. That is, the copyist used all
upper-case letters and did not divide the words with spaces,
as we do in English. To the right is an example of an uncial
of Book of John from the early 2 century. It’s called papyrus
nd
66 (P66).

66