Written Bible Through History

The Bible has been called the greatest book in human history. This lively class will cover the Bible from oral tradition to handwritten manuscripts to the printed book form. It discusses the establishment of the canon of both the Old and the New Testament books. It will describe the development of writing and the Bible, as well as archaeological finds confirming the accuracy of the ancient texts. It will discuss Bible stories as history and as metaphors and archetypal themes. It explains the problems of translation of the Bible from ancient Aramaic to Hebrew to Greek and Latin and to modern languages like English and German. It will describe the major printed Bibles and their impact on the Reformation, exemplifying the most important printed Bibles and their translators