by Mary W. Matthews

Created on: September 15, 2010

Most of the Bible was set into writing during the Bronze Age, from roughly 1000 BCE to roughly 500 BCE. Professional scribes, men whose job required absolute accuracy, laboriously home-made their ink and slowly, carefully inscribed their holy stories onto "parchment,” or tanned animal hides. Neither vowels nor word spacing had been invented yet, much less lower-case letters, so if English were Hebrew, “In the beginning, when God created” would be set down as “NTHBGNNNGWHNGDCRTD.” Or did they mean, “Not he, bug none, no go. Why no go? Decree tidy”? … How do YOU know?

Unlike the vast majority of the Bible, the Christian Testament, the final fourth (approximately), was written during the Iron Age, between about 72 CE and about 300 CE. The men who copied the gospels, letters, and other books of the Christian Testament were NOT professional scribes, but rather ordinary Christians who had the good fortune to be among the three percent of society who were literate. Some of them inserted their own words and ideas into what they were copying. The famous story about Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, for example, was inserted into the Bible sometime in the fourth century of the common era. In the “real world” of history, Jesus may even have been illiterate.

Like the scribes who set down the Hebrew Scriptures, the amateur copiers of the “new” testament had to make their own ink. Unlike the Hebrew Bible, however, the Christian Testament was written on papyrus, or mashed river reeds, and mashed river reeds obviously do not last as well as tanned animal skins. There are 138,020 words in the Christian Testament, and there are well over 200,000 fragments of papyrus in existence today that contain one or more of its verses. A few of these fragments contradict each other; where one fragment might say, “Jesus said X,” another fragment will say “Jesus said NOT X.” Which fragment is the holy word of God, immutable and “inerrant,” and which fragment is mutable and errant? … How do YOU know?

For both the Hebrew Scriptures AND the Christian Testament, the highest level of technology was the war chariot. They didn’t have toilet paper – heck, they didn’t have PAPER. Virtually no one had indoor plumbing. You know what they used instead of toilet paper in Bible times? A sponge on a stick, carefully rinsed after each use. (This OUGHT to change how you

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