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The Bible is a book that essentially will never go out of print. It is not a book in the sense that most people think of books. No one person sat down over a lifetime and wrote it. It is the compilation of books that God gave man over a long period of of time. These books include original Jewish texts as well as Greek texts later written by the Apostles.

The Jewish portion of the texts was transposed millions of times by Jewish scribes that did nothing but copy the Old Testament. These scribes took this job not as merely a duty but as a religious rite, and went so far as to bathe every time they wrote the name of God because of its holiness. This is why the Old Testament was preserved for so long, It was seen as to precious too lose.

The New and Old Testament have many references within them that refer to the Bible as being eternal. Christians and Jews both defended their texts with the utmost vehemence in order to maintain the promise of God that His Word would be preserved.

The New Testament was written in Greek, a much more convenient language than that of the Old Testament. These passages were easily copied and translated for the furtherance of the Truth by the early Christians; in this way the bible became too widespread to fade into the background, unlike many of the rival religions that contested with Christianity in the early history of the church.

When emperor Constantine, a very controversial character to this day, canonized the Books we recognize today as the Bible (when he called the council of Nicea) the books were essentially protected under Roman law. if you wanted to be in with the emperor you had to be a "Christian". This led to much hypocrisy in the church and eventually led to the Roman Catholic church's being entangled with Rome in an attempt to standardize Christianity. The new emperor had the new texts promulgated as much as possible with the technology that was available to them at the time. This fusion of Rome and Christianity helped preserve the Bible.

During the time known as the Dark Ages, the bible was preserved but not widely printed by the Catholic Church. It was primarily written in Latin (being the remaining fragment of old Roman rule) and was thus only readable by scholars and clergy. However the Catholic Church tightened its grip on the truth and "made it a sin" to own a Bible if you were not in the clergy. The catholic church has since changed their opinion on this topic. But in any event the Bible was preserved.

During the Reformation, begun by Martin Luther, a monk who searched the scriptures and called for reform within the Catholic Church, the Bible was translated into nearly every major European language. The reason for this was that one of the main tenants of Protestantism is that every man is to read the Scriptures and decide for himself the meaning thereof with the aid of Divine Guiding by God. This translation of the Scriptures again promulgated the Bible and caused it to be preserved.

Coming into the modern era, the Bible has been so translated into even more languages and by more people that it is nearly inconceivable to erase the Bible from the world. It has, by all these means, become the most widely translated and sold book.

Learn more about this author, Joshua Jones.
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