Not Taking the Bible for Granted
The Bible is the most amazing piece of literature ever known to man. Not only is its formation miraculous in nature and remarkable, it is the living Word of Life. The Bible is living and breathing. When you open it up, you can feel the power of its words. But, just like an old friend, you can lose your understanding of this if you do not spend time with it. When we have a greater understanding of who and what formed the Bible that we hold in our hands today, it can develop within us a deeper feeling of gratitude and reverence for the Word that God has graciously given us.
We live in a world that has the most access ever to the Bible and its resources, yet we read the Bible less and less. Just from the 1980s alone, Bible readership has dropped from 73% to 59% in 2000 (Gallup, 2000). Today, only around 39% of Americans say they read the Bible a couple times a year according to Christianity Today (Macinnis, 2022). Why is that? I would argue that it’s because we are so distracted by so many other things that we fail to find adequate time to read and study our Bibles; consequently, we slowly begin to lose our connection with it. Today, we take for granted that many people across history have had to sacrifice so much of themselves for the Bible, even their own lives.
Men like John Wycliffe, Jan Hus and William Tyndale all died for their efforts to translate the Bible into English. Instead of cowering in fear and giving in to societal and political pressures, they boldly pushed forward their efforts to create a Bible translation that was accessible for everyone. Tyndale is well known for his move to Germany in order to print his translation. He then had to flee, halfway through translating the Book of Matthew, papers in hand as the place was being raided. He was later strangled and burned at the stake (Christianity Today).
Below is James White’s lecture on the history of how our modern Bible was formed over time. At around the 9:00 minute mark he talks about a few men who knew who possessed the scriptural manuscripts at the time, around 303 AD when the Roman Empire was at its height of Christian persecution. The men boldly did not give up the whereabouts of these people in order to preserve the scriptures, and they were killed because of it.
We need a greater understanding of church history and Bible history. We need to hear these stories of the men and women over the last 2,000 years who sacrificed so much so that we could have our Bibles today. Even recently, Wuwih William Gemuh, a bible translator was killed this year in Northern Cameroon because of his translating work (Wycliffe, 2023). And this is not necessarily uncommon in our modern age. In some places, Bibles even have to be smuggled into countries in order for Christians to read them. And many face persecution because of this.
My goal here is to shed some light on the history behind the Bible and how many of us are able to walk into a store, buy one and read it that day. I know for myself, when I read some of these stories and looked more into this topic, I developed an entirely new appreciation for the Bible that I read every day. I had more reverence for it, not taking it for granted. My hope is that this will create some kind of spark within you to research this more in depth on your own. To seek out more information on how the Bible was created and the stories of who sacrificed everything to keep the Word of God alive. I pray that this stirs within you a deeper feeling of gratitude and sense of connection with the Bible. In the next post, we’ll look at modern Bible translations and the manuscripts that helped develop those translations.
