Page 49 - Bible Doctrine Survey I- Student Textbook

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. 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. 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.

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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).

In 1844 Constantine von Tischendorf embarked on a
journey to the Middle Ease searching for
manuscripts. While visiting the monastery of St.
Catherine on Mt. Sinai, he noticed that the monks
were burning scraps of the Septuagint. He
examined the scraps and found they were
extremely old. Years later, he presented the monastery with a gift of a copy of the Septuagint, and in
return, they pulled an old manuscript from the closet wrapped in red cloth. It turned out to be a
complete uncial of the entire New Testament that was over 1500 years old! It is called the Codex
Sinaiticus and is currently on display in the British Museum.

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