Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
THE BIBLE IN ITS MAKING
The most Wonderful Book in the World
BY
MILDRED DUFF AND NOEL HOPE
COMPANION VOLUME TO
'_Where Moses went to School,_'
'_When Moses learnt to Rule,_'
'_Esther the Queen,_'
_'Daniel the Prophet,' and_
'_Hezekiah the King._'
ILLUSTRATED BY NOEL HOPE
With Sketches of the Original Monuments and Stone Pictures
MARSHALL BROTHERS, LTD.,
PUBLISHERS,
LONDON, EDINBURGH & NEW YORK
1912
_Uniform with this Volume_
PRICE ONE SHILLING
Where Moses went to School
Where Moses learnt to Rule
Esther the Queen
Daniel the Prophet
Hezekiah the King
_All fully Illustrated_
MARSHALL BROTHERS, LTD.,
PUBLISHERS,
LONDON, EDINBURGH & NEW YORK
FOREWORD
One great universal law runs through the realm of nature. Our Saviour
gave it in a sentence: 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the
full corn in the ear.'
It is with the desire to show that the same law rules in another of
God's creations--The Bible--that this little volume has been prepared.
The Bible has as literally 'grown' as has an oak tree; and probably
there is no more likeness between the Bible as we know it to-day and
its earliest beginning, than we find between the mighty tree, and the
acorn from which it sprang.
The subject is so vast that we have not attempted anything beyond the
briefest outline. Our purpose has been merely to give some idea of the
origin of the Bible books, up to the measure of our present light upon
the subject, and also to show the purpose for which they were written.
But if our readers, by seeing something of the wonder and glory of the
Holy Scriptures, are able to catch a glimpse of the Creator's mind
behind the whole, our work will not have been in vain.
MILDRED DUFF.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. A LIVING BOOK
II. THE SECRET OF ITS GREATNESS
III. MOSES AND HIS WRITINGS
IV. THE HISTORY BOOKS
V. THE SCATTERING OF THE PEOPLE
VI. THE ATTACK ON THE SCRIPTURES
VII. TWO FAMOUS VERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES
VIII. THE BIBLE IN THE DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST
IX. THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM
X. THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
XI. HOW THE GOSPELS CAME TO BE WRITTEN
XII. SOME OTHER WRITERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
XIII. THE FIRST BIBLE PICTURES
THE BIBLE IN ITS MAKING
CHAPTER I
A LIVING BOOK
[Illustration: (drop cap T) Symbol of "Asshur", the principal Assyrian
idol.]
There is only one Book that never grows old.
For thousands of years men have been writing books. Most books are
forgotten soon after they are written; a few of the best and wisest are
remembered for a time.
But all at last grow old; new discoveries are made; new ideas arise;
the old books are out of date; their usefulness is at an end. Students
are the only people who still care to read them.
The nations to which the authors of these first books belonged have
passed away, the languages in which they were written are 'dead'--that
is, they have ceased to be used in daily life in any part of the world.
Broken bits and torn fragments of some of the early books may be seen
in the glass cases of museums. Learned men pore over the fragments,
and try to piece them together, to find out their meaning once again;
but no one else cares much whether they mean anything or not. For the
books are dead. They cannot touch the heart of any human being; they
have nothing to do with the busy world of living men and women any more.
Now, our Bible was first written in these ancient languages: is it,
therefore, to be classed among the 'dead' books of the world?
No, indeed. The fact alone that the Word of God can be read to-day in
412 living languages proves clearly that it is no dead book; and when
we remember that last year 5,000,000 new copies of the Bible were sent
into the busy working world for men and women by one Society alone, we
see how truly 'alive' it must be.
Nations may pass, languages die, the whole world may change, yet the
Bible will live on. Why is this?
Because in the Bible alone, of all the books seen on this earth, there
is found a message for every man, woman, or child who has ever lived or
will live while the world lasts:
It is the Message of God's Salvation through His Son Jesus Christ.
The message is for all; for the cleverest white man, the most ignorant
savage; for the black man of Africa, the yellow man of China, the tawny
little man who lives among the icefields of the Arctic Circle.
It does not matter who the person is, nor where he lives; a living
force exists in the Bible that will help every human being who acts
upon its words to become one of God's true sons and soldiers. No human
wisdom can explain this.
The Bible tells us about Christ. Before Christ came all teaching led
up to Him. He is the only safe Guide for our daily life. Through His
death alone we have hope for the future. From the first page to the
last the Bible speaks of Christ. This is the secret of its wondrous
power.
'_These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you,
that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me._' (Luke
xxiv. 44.)
Although we speak of the Bible as one Book, because it tells one
world-wide story, yet this one Book is made up of many books--of a
whole library of books in fact.
[Illustration: BROKEN BITS OF CLAY BOOKS IN THE CUNEIFORM LANGUAGE,
BELONGING TO THE TIME WHEN MOSES WROTE THE FIRST WORDS OF GENESIS]
Go into a library, look at the well-stocked shelves. Here is a volume
of history, here a book of beautiful poetry, here a life of a great and
noble warrior. This book was written only last year, this one appeared
many years before you were born.
Just so is it with the books of the Bible.
For more than a thousand years God was calling the best and wisest men
of the Jewish nation to write for His Book. Some of the authors were
rich and learned; many were humble and poor. Kings wrote for it; a
shepherd-boy; a captive lad who had been carried away as a slave into a
strange land; a great leader; a humble fruit-gatherer; a hated
tax-collector; a tent-maker; many poor fishermen. God found work for
them all.
There are sixty-six books in the Bible, written by at least forty
different authors. Books on history; collections of sacred songs;
lives of good men and women; stirring appeals to the sinful. God chose
the men best fitted to write each part. He called them to His work; He
spoke to their hearts; He put His Spirit into their minds.
In these days those who read God's Word often forget what old, old
writings the first books in the Bible are, and how everything has
changed since they were written.
Seeing the words so clearly printed on fine white paper, readers do not
stop to think that they have come down to us from the days when the
greatest nations in the world wrote their best books on lumps of clay,
or on rough, brittle paper made from brown reeds.
So these Bible readers grow impatient, and because they cannot
understand everything all at once, some are even foolish enough to give
up reading the Old Testament altogether.
But the things that are hard to understand are only hard because we are
still so ignorant. Whenever any new discovery about the ancient times
has been made it has always shown us how exactly true the Bible is.
Some years ago, just at the time when the doubts and carpings were at
their worst, when those people who did not trust God even declared that
many of the cities and kings mentioned in the Old Testament had never
existed at all, a wonderful thing happened. God allowed the old cities
themselves to be brought to light once more.
Deep under the earth they were found, with their beautiful palaces,
libraries full of books, and long picture-galleries, lined from end to
end with stone and marble slabs, on which were cut portraits of the
very kings whose existence the people were beginning to doubt! This is
how it happened.
'The Bible does not describe things as they really were,' said some
people. 'In Old Testament times, for instance, the nations were very
rough and ignorant; as for Moses--who is supposed to have written the
first books of the Bible--it is most doubtful whether he ever learned
to read and write at all.'
'But Moses was brought up in Egypt, and the Egyptians were very
learned; the Bible says so,' answered others.
'The man who wrote those words in the Bible may have made a mistake.
It is true that the ruins of old Egyptian temples and palaces are
covered with strange figures and signs; but who can say now whether
they mean anything or not?'
Those who trusted in God's Word could not answer these questions; but
just at this time God allowed the first great discovery to be made; for
the moment had at last come when all thoughtful men and women needed to
be able to settle these questions for themselves.
In the year 1799 a French officer who was in Egypt with Napoleon's army
discovered the Rosetta Stone.
You may see this stone in the British Museum. It is a great block of
black marble. On the smooth side, cut deeply in the stone, are a
number of lines of ancient writing. Many stones covered with ancient
writing had been found before, but this one is different from all the
rest.
The lines at the top of the stone are in the strange old Egyptian
picture-writing, which learned men have agreed to call 'Hieroglyphic';
that is, 'writing in pictures.' This was a very special kind of
writing in ancient Egypt, and generally kept for important occasions.
The lines in the middle give the same words, but in the ordinary
handwriting used for correspondence in ancient Egypt; and last of all
is found a translation of the Egyptian words written in ancient Greek.
This old kind of Greek is not spoken in daily life by any people
to-day, but many learned men can read and write it with ease; so that,
you see, by the help of the Greek translation, the Rosetta Stone became
a key for discovering the meaning of both kinds of ancient Egyptian
letters. Thus, by the help of the Rosetta Stone, and after years of
patient labour, the long-dead language could be read once more.
Egypt--the land into which Joseph was sold, where the Israelites became
a nation, and Moses was born and educated! How great a joy to read the
words carved on temple walls, or in palace halls; and to find with each
word read how exactly the Egypt of ancient days is described in the
Bible!
The dress the people wore, the food they ate, the way they spoke to
their kings, the description of their funerals, the very name of their
famous river, and the words they used to describe the plants, insects,
and cattle of Egypt--all these are found in the Bible and are proofs of
the care with which Moses wrote of the land of his birth.
But other nations besides the Egyptians are mentioned in the Bible; and
about them also grave doubts arose. Almost all the Old Testament
prophets cried out against the wickedness of Assyria and Babylon, and
foretold the awful punishment which God would bring upon them for their
pride and cruelty, unless they repented.
They did not repent; destruction came upon them; their very names were
forgotten, and their cities as utterly lost to the world as though they
had never existed.
'Nineveh, Babylon? There _were_ such cities once, perhaps; but as for
the kings of whom the Bible speaks--Sennacherib, who came up against
Jerusalem, and was driven back through the prayers of God's servants,
Isaiah and King Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 19); Nebuchadnezzar, who
carried Daniel away into Babylon; Ahasuerus, who reigned "_from India
even unto Ethiopia_" (Esther)--well, if they ever lived at all, they
were certainly not the kind of kings spoken of in the Old Testament.
But it all happened so long ago that we cannot expect to understand
much about it now.'
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN SCRIBES AT WORK. (A) CASES FOR HOLDING WRITING
MATERIALS. NOTICE SPARE PEN PLACED BEHIND THE CLERK'S EAR]
So the questioners settled the matter in their own minds; but God had
the answer to their questions all ready for them.
He put into the hearts of some brave men the idea of going out to the
desolate plains, '_empty and void, and waste_' (Nahum ii. 10), the
plains that had once been the rich empires of Assyria and Babylon, and
there to search patiently for some trace of the splendid cities of old.
Very wonderful is the story of how these searchers found them.
Nineveh had been lying buried under huge mounds of rubbish for more
than two thousand years. Now, just at the time when her testimony was
needed, the ruined halls of her majestic palaces were once more brought
to the light of day.
What had been the names of these grim kings of old, whose stern-faced
figures were sculptured on the walls? Could any among them be the
fierce Assyrian kings mentioned in the Bible?
If only the strange wedge-shaped letters that covered every vacant
space on the stone slabs could be read, what a message from the past
they would reveal.
Once again clever men set to work and persevered until the strange
letters were deciphered, and the palace-walls gave up their secrets.
Here was King Sennacherib; here Tiglath-pileser (2 Kings xv. 29); here
Esarhaddon (2 Kings xix. 37). Oh, how wonderful to look at the
old-time portraits which had been drawn from the men themselves!
'Well, although the Egyptians and Assyrians prove to have been great
nations in the time of Moses, they had no communication with each other
except in war time; they spoke different languages, wrote in altogether
different styles, and had very different ideas about everything.
Nations kept to themselves in those days. What the Bible says of their
intercourse must be wrong.'
This all the clever people were quite sure about, but once again God
showed them their mistake.
Twenty-five years ago an Egyptian peasant woman was walking among the
ruins of an ancient Egyptian city--a city built before the time of
Moses. Bright yellow sand had drifted over the broken columns and
painted pavements of what had once been the palace of a great king.
But the peasant woman did not care for that. Was there anything hidden
in the sand that she could sell? This was all her thought.
Suddenly her foot struck against something hard in the sand. She
looked down. Could it be a stone?
No, it was not a stone, but a queer oblong lump, or tablet of clay,
hardened into a brick, and covered with strange marks that looked like
writing. She wondered at it, for with all her findings in the ruins
she had never come upon anything like this before.
She showed the tablet to her friends, and they dug down deep in the
sand, and found whole sackfuls of baked clay tablets. But when the
dealer in curiosities saw the lumps of baked clay he shook his head,
and would give very little money for them.
After a while some of the bricks were taken to Paris and London.
'These tablets could _not_ have been found in Egypt,' decided the
learned professors; 'they are either imitations, or they were found
somewhere else. These are clay letters, and must have been written in
Assyria or Babylonia. No Egyptian could have understood a word of
them.'
Yet the tablets had been found in Egypt, and had been read by the king
of Egypt's scribes, for the peasant woman, had all unknowingly
discovered what remained of the Foreign Office belonging to the old
Egyptian nation, and thus we see that the Egyptians of Moses' time
could read and write foreign languages as easily as we can to-day read
and write French or German!